“I redid the roof myself, though. Plus rigged the woodstove and the chimney.”
He followed her up a rocky path, his anesthetized feet painfully returning to sensation with each step. Eighty dollars for a shirt that seemed determined to cost him a hell of a lot more than money. He silently thanked his father for bullying him into finishing the rank of Eagle Scout; if he hadn’t earned all those merit badges he wouldn’t have been able to climb the tree at all, let alone save his sorry ass from the white jaws of death this woman kept as her familiar.
“Come on in. With this yuppie gizmo, it doesn’t take that long for the water to boil.” She pointed to a butane-fired single-burner cooker set atop a crudely fashioned plywood-and-cinder-block counter. “My one extravagance.”
She turned a transistor radio low, some twangy country station specializing in broken-heart ballads in between beer commercials. Coors Light, it’s the right beer now! That shit-howdy tastelessness he somehow expected. No electricity. Well, of course not, were they within five miles of a telephone pole? She lit an oil lamp with an Ohio blue tip and set the flickering glass sconce on an upended orange crate. There was a sofa bed, turquoise vinyl, pulled out to bed length, covered with an opened sleeping bag and a chevron-patterned Mexican horse blanket that had seen better days. Someone had nailed a rusty horseshoe directly in the center of the wall above the bed. A yellow trunk with brass latches and the black-painted initials F.V. in Old English italic was pushed up against one wall. That about cleared it for the inventory. What kind of life was she living here? Trixie Belden and the Box Canyon Mystery? Jesus H. Christ. His feet tangled in a mound of mashed aluminum cans, and he tripped, just barely catching himself on the pulled-out sofa bed.
“You drink a lot of soda.”
She scooped the cans into a grocery sack. “Hannah’s.”
“The dog drinks soda?”
“No, she collects cans for recycling. I buy her tinned dog food with it, otherwise with our budget it’s strictly dry kibble.” She gathered up the blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. It smelled strongly of horse. “This will help to take off the chill.” She pumped water at the basin into a battered aluminum coffeepot and set it on the butane burner.
“You really enjoy pulling my leg. A dog who collects cans.”
“Swear to God. She won’t play Frisbee, ball, fetch, any of the usual dog nonsense. One day she brought me a Coke can, and I gave her a reward. You’d be surprised what you can do with simple reinforcement. Hannah had a hard go of it until we hooked up. She tries to pull her weight, and I try to do my best by her.”
He looked down at the shepherd, who was nosing an old enamel pot half-filled with chow but still keeping an eye on him. “A dog with the Puritan work ethic.”
She smiled, exposing the chipped tooth. “Maybe so. Anyhow, I like the way you make it sound. Feeling warmer?”
“A little. Were you planning to show up at all?”
She cocked her head and stared at him for a full minute, her mouth drawn in a straight line. “You don’t know me, Professor, so you can take that nasty tone out of your voice. I generally keep my word. I got hung up at my other job, and I forgot you. That’s all.”
“Your other job?”
“Teaching kids to ride horses.”
A horse bum. Terrific.
“What do you do?”
“I teach, too. Folklore, the old myths. Junior college kids—a few older students returning to school.”
She smiled. “Like ‘How the Elephant Got His Trunk’?”
“Not exactly. That’s more in the line of fables, though we do cross over from time to time. Myths deal more directly with creation stories, the rulers of the heavens, sky, sea, and underworld—how the mortals who became entangled with the gods made out.”
“Not all that well, I guess?”
“Well, usually not. My shirt?”
“It’s just out back. I’ll get it.” She went out the front door—the only door, Hank noted—a homemade plywood affair with the shimmy of dampness turning the elevated grain furry. It had a simple hook-and-eye latch on the inside. Wouldn’t keep out a determined visitor, but the dog might. Hannah lifted her head and fixed him with a wary stare. Those coal black eyes were unreadable. He didn’t move beyond his helpless shivering.
Chloe returned, shutting the door against a wind that had come up icy. In her hand were the remains of his shirt, torn, muddied, shredded ivory cotton and a few buttons, all of it chewed beyond repair. She was grim faced. “Hannah did a real number on it. Funny, she usually leaves the laundry alone.” She placed the fabric on the counter. “Look. I’ll pay you for it, but I can’t do it all at once. Let me write you an IOU. And you can check with Phil, my word’s good.”
He felt ridiculous taking money from this impoverished woman whose idea of luxury was a butane burner and a dime-store oil lamp. “It’s just a shirt. I have others. Maybe we should forget the entire episode.”
“Oh, no. It was my fault, and I want to pay for it.”
She turned her back to him and set out two tall Ball glass jars. His grandmother used to have those, back when he was a kid. After the homemade piccalilli was gone, she might fill the jars with prickly pear jelly or iced tea with a sprig of mint from her herb garden. She’d lived in the Arizona desert long before it became fashionable to do so. He remembered bright, still mornings and her weathered face smiling at him across the breakfast table. Outside, long-armed cacti and the cackle of a passing roadrunner over rocks so red he wondered if he cracked them open they might bleed. His father hadn’t approved of drinking from jars, or of the desert as Hank’s playground, but they’d sent him there for almost a year when he was four or five and his sister Annie was dying, and many a summer after she was gone. His grandmother’s odd ways were a source of childhood fascination to him. It had been years since he’d thought about those jars. How he’d cried when she grew ill and no longer remembered him. He wasn’t allowed to go along when his parents shut up the house. His first experience with death had been Annie’s, but she was a faint memory. Then Nana was gone—no funeral, just no longer there. She’d been wise. She would have understood this woman before him, would have known exactly how to speak to her without saying the wrong thing.
He became acutely aware of his need to pee. There was no bathroom to the place, no real accoutrements to elevate it above storeroom or broom closet, though it had a true floor; he could feel the support joists squeak beneath his feet. But it was obviously her home, and she must have encountered the same pressing need. Across from the counter shelf there was a chipped iron sink with an old-fashioned pump handle that worked; he’d seen her draw the water for the cocoa, so they were hooked up to a water line somewhere. Maybe out there in the woods, an outhouse? How did one ask? One didn’t.
He crossed his legs on the fold-out couch. A turned-back corner of the sleeping bag lining he sat on featured cowboys and Indians involved in an endless chase. He saw a pair of riding boots set out on a sheet of newspaper on the floor, next to them, rags and a tin of boot-black. He felt her watching him assess the place, and her dignity seared him in places that had moments earlier been numb with cold. They stared at each other.
He saw in the plain face a fierce humility, as frankly exposed as the cow skull that hung on the wallboard. A large rock doubled as a doorstop, and a five-gallon jar next to it was filled with the dog’s kibble. Every material object in this room had a practical application. He remembered her scarred back outside Phil Green’s office and felt the itch of excitement stir below his belt. Why? Right now, he needed to pee, then revive under a hot shower, and collapse into his own bed. A microwaved Stouffer’s macaroni-and-cheese dinner and a glass of Chablis, comfort food to numb this day into memory. He didn’t need a woman, didn’t need two hours up a tree to round out his life. But he wanted to stay. If he dropped the shirt and left, she would resurrect it, study the possibilities, and find a use for torn fabric. She was that kind of person. He wanted to know what s
he would do with it—of what use it could possibly be to her. Suddenly the interior of the cabin shifted for him. The cow skull, placed strategically to cover the patched gypsum. Simple but deliberate positioning, like centering the horseshoe. Some people might go so far as to call it art.
“Thus far I’ve been a jerk—sorry.”
She set the powdered cocoa packets onto the counter and smiled. “I don’t get a lot of visitors.”
“Would you believe I’m pleased to be among the invited?”
She stood still, buttoned to the chin in her denim jacket. The sleeves were rolled up to elbow length, and a faded blue turtleneck peeked out of her collar. He wondered what else she was wearing, whether her flesh was as chilled as his was, and what it might feel like to touch her. “Water takes its own sweet time to boil, doesn’t it?” she said.
If he didn’t urinate soon, his bladder might burst.
She nodded her head toward the window. “Creek’s up because of the rain. Hear it? What a great sound, water hurrying over rocks.”
He winced. All too well he could hear the rushing water, which reminded him of his own pressing need. He could slip outside, use the excuse of taking a look at the creek. What about the dog?
“Hey, listen, if you need to pee, go find a rock. I’ll hold the dog.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, What do you do?”
She laughed. “You ask a lot of questions, Professor. There’s a portable on the way into the compound. It’s my last stop at night and first one in the morning. I keep a bedpan thing outdoors for emergencies. I’ve pretty much trained my body to be patient.” She opened the door. “Go on. Your cocoa will still be here when you get back.”
He slipped out the door behind her house. There were man-size boulders down by the creek, and he walked toward them, noting her clothesline strung between two oak trees, where his shirt had died in the jaws of the white beast. Better the shirt than me. Unzipped and standing there in the cold dark, he looked down at his penis in his hands. How completely transparent a man he was. She knew just by looking at him. Knew exactly what he was thinking, as if there were a trapdoor that opened into his predictable brain and a neon display therein, broadcasting his rudimentary thoughts. What in the hell was he doing here, stuck, hungry, cold, unable to move his car, not even the shirt as a reward for all his trouble? He needed the intervention of the gods to get himself free of this one. Wind blew down his neck and he shivered, shut his eyes, and listened to the hiss of his urine dousing the ground underfoot. People were fooling themselves if they thought there was such a thing as progress. Man was indeed small and utterly dismissable compared to the earth.
The sweet cocoa stung his lips. Outside the window he could make out the shadowy outline of the shepherd standing guard. Chloe came over and stood by him. She stared out into the trees.
“See that oak there, the one with the deformed lower branches? A great horned owl comes to it most every night. Not this early, though. She’s something. Devils Hannah so bad she misses her beauty sleep.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I can sleep through anything. I only seem to need about five hours, though. Which is good, since I work two jobs.”
She had a small but sturdy frame beneath all those clothes, and he remembered the pared-down version of her in the café, the real thing in the hallway outside his office. Her blue jeans were worn nearly smooth, her legs stuffed into knee-high policeman boots that amplified her steps and flattered her shapely calves. Hank abandoned the half-drunk cocoa on top of the orange-crate end table.
“All done?”
“I’ll finish it in a minute.” He moved away from the window, closing the distance between them in a few steps that echoed on the bare floor. His heart beat as if he had committed a felony. This near, he was aware of her femaleness tenfold. No warpaint or perfume for allure, just the honest smell of a woman who’d put in a full day’s work. He didn’t see any shower outside. What did she do for washing up? Drag in an old copper washtub, fill it one steaming pot of water at a time? Washcloth, plain soap, scrubbed-pink heated flesh: they were ablutions of the sort that drummed images into his mind he knew had no business being there. What could he say? He hardly knew her, other than to perceive she was masterfully adept at choosing a hearty breakfast, diminishing his wardrobe, and making him want to kiss her.
“You look like you have something on your mind, Professor.”
“I wish you’d call me Hank.”
“Hank.”
“After this is over, would you consider going out with me?”
“Out? You mean like a restaurant, the movies?” She said the words as if rolling them over on her tongue to identify something antique or obsolete. “You’ve been out of this a long time, haven’t you?”
“Not all that long.”
She moved closer to him. Moonlight from the window shot through her hair, turning the blond momentarily to silver, aging her thirty years. She still looked good. She would age well. “You’re a fairly handsome man. I might consider it.”
“Fairly handsome? Am I to take that as a compliment?” He watched her hand find the tear in the front of his sweater and press the ragged edges together as if assessing repairs. His mother had bought it for him last Christmas. It was durable enough for teaching classes, but apparently not when it came to guard dogs. He would have to mention that to Land’s End. Shaker-knit cotton, easily replaceable, thirty-two bucks. He caught her fingers and felt the calluses on her palm. How curious, and compelling, to hold a woman’s hand and find the skin tougher than your own. “You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met.”
“Is that so?” She looked him square in the face, unsmiling. “Kiss me,” she said. “I know you want to. Go on, let’s find out where we’re headed.” She tilted her chin.
Open brown eyes gave permission. Just like that. Do it. She didn’t look away when he bent to her face. All the way down to her lips he was thinking, There have to be logical reasons why not to do this. Think harder, Hank. It is nine-thirty on a school night and here you stand, holed up in some canyon shack with no phone, no heat. You haven’t eaten since breakfast, and what about your car, hood-deep in muck? Outside, a white wolf stands sentry, and here before you is a woman who has wrecked your wardrobe and can apparently read your every thought. But if you walk out that door now, you will turn forty-three, forty-four, and all the way up to eighty, regretting not kissing the horse girl in the canyon shack on that cold January evening when you lost your car to the earth. He pressed his mouth to hers. There was a thin ridge of dried cocoa in the corner of her lips. His tongue began there, tentatively tracing the contour of her full upper lip. Her mouth was still, as if listening to all his had to say. Just when he grew fearful that she was merely enduring him, and he began to pull back, she answered his kiss with her own. Her tongue was small, hot, and sweet, and it moved deliberately. When she slid it in between his lips, he felt each nerve ending leap upright. They stood there a while, touching each other in nonthreatening places, all that clothing between them, two disparate strangers gathering courage, shivering, saying hello in the old common language.
Six months ago, when Hank regrettably allowed Karleen to coax him into her Mondrian designer sheets and pillowcases, she’d handed him a beribboned wicker basket filled with individually packaged condoms; some—though he really didn’t want verification—were supposed to glow in the dark, others purported to be mint flavored. She’d executed the maneuver in a blasé fashion, much as he imagined Chloe at the Wedler Brothers Café might pass packets of saltines to accompany a bowl of chowder. The condoms were manufactured in assorted colors now, with various textures and hides to them, though he’d read the books: plain or nubbed, it didn’t matter to women. He’d laughed at Karleen’s preparedness at the time; she’d countered with a bit of secretarial wisdom: Remember the ant and grasshopper? Now, as Hank Oliver sat on the sofa bed watching Chloe remove her denim jacket, he wished he’d had the foresight to pocket a few of Ka
rleen’s stockpile. Here came the boots: one, two, and underneath them gray men’s socks with a red stripe, socks she tucked into the boots as if embarrassed they were hers. Dammit, Karleen didn’t need that many, and he, foolishly, had fiddled his way into this season quite empty handed.
The transistor radio hummed sad Hawaiian guitar, he couldn’t make out the lyrics—another somebody-done-somebody-wrong song. Presage? Omen? The fire she’d laid in the oil-barrel wood stove was starting to put out some heat, thank God. She was down to her underwear now, the plain, garden-variety white cotton kind, nothing fancy, yet nothing could be more alluring than the honest truth of her body, the hard ridges of her stomach muscles as she bent to shove the boots under the bed, the swell of breasts threatening to spill from the bra cups. She turned toward him, her profile chiseled and stark in the shadows. “You’re still dressed. Did I miss a cue?”
“We need to talk.”
“Sure.” She settled herself Indian-style in the center of the bed, and the springs of the cheap mattress creaked. “You going to tell me you have a wooden leg?”
“Nothing like that.” He ached to touch her skin. It was gleaming in the lamplight. Beneath the bra her nipples were pressing against the cotton, and he wanted to palm them, kiss them, study up close what looked fascinating from far away. “It’s more what I don’t have.”
She took a corner of the blanket for her feet. “You’re afraid I’ll give you some kind of disease? I don’t blame you. Wonder if in the next few years people will start carrying doctors’ affidavits. I have one on my horse, to prove he’s up to date on his vaccines when I take him to shows. Well, when I used to take him to shows.”
“It isn’t solely my concern. What about you? Aren’t you worried?”
She shook her head and stuck a leg out from beneath the blanket, poking a toe into his belt loop. “Last man I slept with was a board-certified veterinarian who pretty much screens skirts for a living. He always used rubbers. That was well over a year ago. If it makes you feel any safer, I tend to do this about once every other decade.” She worked the toe through his belt loop and tugged.
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